Ravi Bhushan

Ravi Bhushan, Group Chief Product and Technology Officer of PropTiger.com, Housing.com and Makaan.com, is an industry expert with close to 12 years of experience in technology and digital domains. He came onboard PropTiger.com as a Vice President with key focus on enhancing product and technology functions. In his current role, Ravi spearheads new-age technology innovations to strengthen the ground product, design and engineering aspects.

Data Analytics, the Need of the Hour

Many a times, it is assumed that data analytics is a technique exercised by the product managers to gain insights about their users. But it has broader applications, say for instance one can use it for marketing benefits as well.

In the era of Artificial intelligence and Machine learning, talking about the importance of data analytics may sound like a bit out dated but the hard fact is that many of the organisations still don’t get the essence and importance of data analytics. We are living in those times where each and every interaction of customers are getting tracked and recorded in a continuous fashion. This is a gold mine of information which, if utilised properly, can become the core of competitive advantage and organisational success. Let’s explore how --

Imagine that all your online systems identify each and every visitor uniquely and records all their interactions. All the processes through which you have offline interactions with the customers are also finally stored in the system. Everyone knows that every person who is interacting with your organisation has his/her unique requirements and the best experience would be if, in our various interactions with customers, we provide them the most seamless custom experience suited for their requirement. This will not only enhance the customer experience, but also help businesses grow due to better conversions.

In today’s world, new features (if any) of your platforms do not provide you a competitive advantage for long as others can easily copy those concepts. In the long run, what remains as the true competitive advantage is your ability to understand your audiences better and provide them the most custom and sophisticated experience. For that, the data analytics is the core and must have. Many a times, it is assumed that data analytics is a technique exercised by the product managers to gain insights about their users. But it has broader applications, say for instance one can use it for marketing benefits as well.

Formally defined, "Data analytics refers to qualitative and quantitative techniques and processes used to enhance productivity and business gain”. The pre-requisite is you need to have data stored in your system for further analysis. And for efficient use of this data one needs to have an infrastructure to query this data and use it for real time and offline processing. As you track each and every interaction of your customer, most of the time you gradually end up collecting massive amount of data and to have efficient processing and querying, people use various big data systems so that the scale of data does not become a challenge. The selection of technology should completely depend upon the use cases and the volume of data. Once you have this system in place, it enables many functions in your organisation for various insights. Predictive modelling, machine learning, features powered using artificial intelligence are all based on this data backbone. Gone are the days where a generic treatment will suffice for all, the real edge is only when you use the data provided by your customers smartly to enhance their experience. There is no other choice of technology should completely depend upon the use cases and the volume of data. Once you have this system in place, it enables many functions in your organisation for various insights. Predictive modelling, machine learning, features powered using artificial intelligence are all based on this data backbone. Gone are the days where a generic treatment will suffice for all, the real edge is only when you use the data provided by your customers smartly to enhance their experience. There is no other choice.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house